Realistic AI? Not Possible Now;
New Videos of Neurons say "Forget It!"Two new videos have just appeared in the prestigious journal Science.
The first is an animation showing the incredible level of detail at the synapse.
The second video, based on hundreds of electron micrographs stitched together,
shows the impossibly complex ultrastructure of the neuropil: the impenetrable forest
surrounding synapses.

The key question is how much of that fine detail must be modeled
to replicate the brain's performance. My guess is that much more is required
than is accounted for in current brain-inspired AI models.

EUV 2014: The Future of Moore's LawWill Moore's Law soon hit a brick wall? To make sure it doesn't,
Cymer, ASML, and Intel have spent billions developing EUV lithography.
Here is the current state of EUV.

BAM - Brain Activity Map:
Every Spike from Every NeuronIn 2012 a blue-ribbon panel of nanotechnologists and neuroscientists from
the Kavli Foundation proposed creating an incredible new set of tools to enable
the visualization of every spike from every neuron in brain-wide regions in real-time.
The resulting functional connectome would greatly advance brain science and its simulation.
Enthusiasts included NIH Director Francis Collins and Pres. Barack Obama. This project
became the ten-year scientific moon shot presented in the 2013 State of the Union!
That project is now the (Obama) Brain Initiative.

Popular: Let the AIs, not us, formulate a billion-year plan! Recently the (Ray) Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence (KAI) newsletter ran a major article
by Lt Col Peter Garretson (US Air Force)) entitled What our civilization needs is
a billion year plan. Here's what made me bristle in that article: 1) strong advocacy of
manned space programs, 2) using those programs to rescue humanity, and
3) pushing the notion of trillions of humans
spreading throughout the galaxy.

My rebuttal in KAI argues that 1) manned missions, costing 100X the price of science-based
launches, are a waste of precious NASA resources better spent on robotic probes and rovers,
2) humanity is already choking off the biosphere of Earth - we don't need trillions more
in space,
and 3) humanity is a stepping stone to the profound intelligences
soon to emerge
(< 1-2 centuries) that will be the great explorers and engineers of space.

Essential Reading: Optimal Nutrition: Are Fats Killers or Saviors? We are each a community of 10 trillion cells in dynamic equilibrium with what we eat.
So, what should we eat? How many calories per day? How much fat and what kinds of fat?
Controversy abounds, but it's essential to get it right. I examine the issue in detail
and show you the best videos and articles available free on the internet.

Ever Popular: The MYSTERY of CONSCIOUSNESS I have been fascinated by the neurobiology of consciousness for fifty years.
How is it possible
for neural circuits to produce pain, pleasure, and our entire perceived world?
Is it possible for robots to be designed with pain, pleasure, and a subjective world?

My Stanford Lecture Notes 2014: Cognitive Neuroscience and AI(You won't find any of these lectures anywhere else on the web; Stanford is in the forefront
in opening online classes to the world. But most of the lectures I attend are not available except here.
Also look in my WebBrain for archived lecture notes.)

My Sphere of Interest A summary that integrates my various areas of academic interest with long-term
societal goals. History is a race between education and catastrophe. H G Wells

Allen Brain Institute Symposia Video ArchiveA magnificent collection of lectures presented by some of
the world's top neuroscientists to the world's top neuroscientists.).
(Imagine Sir Isaac Newton giving a powerpoint pitch to Queen Ann.)

Computational Models of the Neocortex: Stanford: Spring 2012Tom Dean, Google researcher and former Chairman of Computer Science at Brown,
taught a course at Stanford in computational models of the neocortex in spring 2012.
I audited the course, which featured weekly visits by top computational neuroscientists.
Tom's materials for the course include many must-see, up-to-the minute videos and pdfs,
including the latest from Bruno Olshausen, Ed Boyden, Sebastian Seung, Stephen Smith,
Markus Meister, Dharmendra Modha, Henry Markram, and others.

Is Microsoft Broken? My Struggles with Windows 7 I now enjoy Win7's features but getting there was a major struggle,
battling Restore/ Recover options that didn't work. Perhaps the CIA tolerates
Chinese theft of Microsoft software as a means of reducing China's productivity -
kind of like Iran and Stuxnet. My photos contrast a Microsoft Store and an Apple Store.

Stanford Center for the Explanation of Consciousness(I regularly attend this series featuring some of the foremost philosophers
of mind; recent talks were given by John Searle, Paul and Pat Churchland,
Owen Flanagan, and Pat Suppes - highly recommended, if you're in town.Bob's WebBrain contains all my notes - search CEC or Skokowski (as in Paul, our director.)